Land and soil resources are under immense pressure across the globe. Their degradation has negative implications for many crucial ecological functions and ecosystem services, including food production, carbon storage, heat stress and habitat fragmentation. Indeed, the global sustainability discourse and, in particular, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) framework call for halting land degradation and paying proper attention to the management of land and soil resources (UN 2015). In Europe, a large share of the total land area has already been transformed into land use forms characterised by artificial surfaces, while many current EU policy frameworks and strategies aim to improve the condition of European soils. Among other calls for action, the Soil Strategy for 2030 includes a highly ambitious target to halt land take within the Union and eventually reduce net land take to zero by 2050 (European Commission 2021a). The sections below provide a summary of international and European commitments related to limiting land take and soil sealing.
International commitments
Reports by international organisations such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have long underlined the pervasive and systemic nature of land degradation and the need to consider the interconnected challenges arising from the deteriorating state of global land resources. The IPBES Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration (2018) provided a critical analysis of the state of the knowledge regarding terrestrial ecosystems and identified governance mechanisms with the potential to reduce the negative environmental, social and economic impacts of land degradation and to rehabilitate and restore degraded land. The IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (2019) scrutinised the complex interlinkages between desertification, land degradation, food security and greenhouse gas fluxes. The FAO report on food system trends and challenges (FAO 2019) highlighted how land use and land use changes are core issues for the future of food systems. The unsustainability of urban development patterns has been stressed in various reports (such as OECD 2018). Together, the reports of international organisations paint a clear picture: avoiding land degradation and restoring degraded land are essential for meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Striving for sustainable land consumption practices is an important part of this agenda.
The SDG framework contains two non-binding targets related to land take: SDG 15.3 on land degradation neutrality and SDG 11.3 target on enhancing inclusive and sustainable urbanisation. SDG 15.3 has a broader scope, aiming to “combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world by 2030” (UN 2015). It is measured by the indicator “Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area”, which can be further disaggregated by land cover type (e.g. tree-covered areas, grassland, cropland), ecosystem type (e.g. temperate-boreal forests and woodlands, intensive land use systems) or agricultural area class (cropland, permanent meadows, pastures). Disaggregation based on ecosystem type has particular relevance from a land take and soil sealing perspective, as it helps to identify sensitive areas and mitigate biases that may arise when restoring certain ecosystem types at the expense of others.
SDG 11.3 promotes sustainable land consumption, particularly in urban areas, and is measured by indicator 11.3.1: “Ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate”. It is proposed to be disaggregated by land consumption type (e.g. forestry, built-up areas, land used for the maintenance and restoration of environmental functions) and by type of (urban) growth (infill, extension, leapfrogging). The disaggregation is intended to help monitor the impact of the expansion of human settlements compared to other land uses (UN Environment Programme). Marquard et al. (2020) concluded that, for SDG indicator 11.3.1, land consumption has a specific, narrower meaning as it only tracks land conversions related to urbanisation processes. It should not therefore be used as a single indicator for land take.
EU-level commitments and obligations
The EU has intensified its climate and biodiversity ambitions in recent years. These ambitions are reflected in the European Green Deal (EGD), an overarching growth and climate strategy consisting of various sub-strategies and legislative proposals. In many EU policy frameworks and strategies, the connection to land take and soil sealing is implicit. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, for example, stresses that unsustainable use of land is one of the key drivers of biodiversity loss (European Commission 2020a). A key action under this strategy is the Nature Restoration Law (NRL), which sets binding targets for habitat recovery and sustainable land management in Member States. Many of the NRL measures will have implications for planning and land use development practices in high-green urban settings with large amounts of green space and ample ecosystem services, as represented by many Nordic cities (Kinnunen et al., 2025). In a case study from Helsinki, Finland, Kinnunen et al. (2025) anticipate that, with a growing population, achieving an increasing trend in tree canopy and green space cover would require drastically increasing land use efficiency and densifying the urban structure.
Several other EU strategies also highlight the importance of actions addressing land take and land and soil degradation, including the EU Circular Economy Action Plan (European Commission 2020b), the EU Zero Pollution Action Plan (European Commission 2021b), the EU Climate Law (2021/1119), the Farm to Fork Strategy (European Commission 2020c) and the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 (European Commission 2021c). The Forest Strategy, for example, calls for sustainable forest management to counterbalance increasing pressures on forests and maintain their potential to fulfil relevant ecological, economic and social functions. The Circular Economy Action Plan calls for actions that reduce pressure on natural resources, including land and soil resources, and thereby contribute to achieving the Union’s climate neutrality and biodiversity targets.
The EU Soil Strategy for 2030 relates most directly to land take and soil sealing, as it contains an explicit target for halting land take within the Union, stating that the objective is to halve net land take by 2035 and reduce it to zero by 2050 (European Commission, 2021a). The same objective of “No Net Land Take” (NNLT) by 2050 was already set in 2011 in the EU’s Roadmap to a Resource-Efficient Europe (European Commission 2011). While a formally stated objective, NNLT is non-binding and does not specify the responsibilities of national and regional authorities in advancing the objective. It is controversial, since the EU does not have land use planning mandates and the objective must be translated to national and sub-national levels of government to be implemented (Gradinaru et al., 2023).
NNLT has furthermore been widely criticised for its ambiguity, as land take is far from a clear-cut concept (see e.g. Decoville and Feltgen, 2023; Evers, 2024; Marquard et al., 2020). The conceptual debate has mainly concerned what should be considered “natural land”, “semi-natural land” and “artificial land”. The overall message is that binary and simplistic differentiation between artificial and non-artificial land can lead to misleading indicators that treat different local, regional and national settings unequally (Decoville and Feltgen, 2023). The recent Soil Monitoring Law (SML, 2025/2360) indicates a shift in the definition of land take, as it stresses that land take should be seen as an overarching concept with various processes linked to it and defines it in a qualitative manner as “a process which causes a modification of land and of the characteristics of soil” (SML, 2025/2360). This interpretation links land take more closely to soil policy and distances it from efforts to quantify land consumption in different land use categories (Evers, 2026).
SML is the first law within this domain, but the legislative process leading up to the law has been described as a watered-down process in which initial ambitions were significantly reduced, thereby defusing and delaying conflict over land take (Evers, 2026). Indeed, the directive introduces mandatory monitoring obligations for Member States but does not oblige them to reduce their land consumption. The monitoring framework is intended to focus on more visible aspects of land take, namely soil sealing and soil removal. Member States are required to transpose the directive’s provisions into national legislation and to establish a national monitoring framework by the end of 2028. The monitoring framework requirements are somewhat vague. Article 6 of SML declares that the framework should be established at an appropriate level to ensure regular, coherent and accurate monitoring of soil health, soil sealing and soil removal. The first reporting deadline is set for the end of 2031. Subsequently, the European Commission will carry out an evaluation on progress and might decide on further requirements (SML 2025/2360). For Iceland and Norway, the directive is relevant more indirectly. It may influence, for example, Nordic policy learning and the development of comparable monitoring practices.